Friday, 31 December 2010

In less than an hour, it will be 2011 and I was wondering how to blog about the New Year and the year ending. I thought I would put a song here, it would be more eloquent than the clichés I could type about, well, about time passing. Can be escape clichés when talking about new year?

I was distractly watching a documentary on Rolf Harris recently, and his interpretation of Waltzing Matilda struck me. I knew vaguely that song (from Secret Valley, a children program I used to watch, which used the music but with different lyrics for the theme song), but I literally fell in love with it. Of course I felt in love the way I usually do: flat on my face, heart beating fast, spirit uplifted as if I was an Australian. It got stuck in my head and I want this to be my new drinking song, my Odyssey song (read: my travel song) and, since it will be New Year, my New Year song. I don't know why I fell in love with Waltzing Matilda. I am not particularly into Australia, although I admire some of its actors, particularly Cate Blanchettto whom my admiration is close to worship (which reminds me that I did not spend an evening with her in a long time), I was fascinated as a child about its wildlife and I really want to go to the Sydney Opera House once in my life. Okay, enough reasons to love the country I guess, but my love for this particular folk song is still a mystery to me. Somehow it reminds me of the Irish folk songs I am quite fond of. And the New Year is a good reason as any to put it on this blog. So here it is, sang by Rolf Harris:

Wednesday, 29 December 2010

I became a night owl during my years at university. Probably before come to think of it, but I developed a nocturnal living cycle during my numerous nights where I was working on essays and later on on my PhD thesis. I blogged aboutit before. I am no more nocturnal nowadays. But since the Christmas holidays, I became a night owl again. It usually happens during holidays and I welcome it. Unlike the days when I was a student, I can sleep late in the morning and I am active doing something fun: reading, watching TV/movies/what have you and of course blogging.

The atheist of the title being me. I know I have blogged about a similar topic very recently, but this is still Christmastime after all. This post is also an excuse to upload on this blog a picture of my family's Christmas tree in Chicoutimi. That might illustrate why I find this forced stay in England for the season so cruel. As you know, I received The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, which I have started reading with great interest. Books you love often express things you have been feeling or thinking before and this one does exactly this. Of course it depends of the writer and there is a wide variety of them, but it is fascinating to see how my own experience and perspective on things is an echo of so many other people's. It is good to feel that I am not alone. Reading the book puts things into perspective as well: what I blog about is not always very original.

Christmas for me is a celebration that is now self-justifiable: I celebrate because it's Christmas. I couldn't care less about the veracity of the Nativity legend, which is exactly this, a legend, but I love its imagery and its icons. We could commemorate the death of Balder (as probably many Germanic European did at a time) that it would not make any difference to me. And as I said before, a Christmas tree is a decorated Yggdrasil. Christmas is a secular holiday that took the guise of a Christian one.

Anyway, I thought I would put some video from Youtube on the subject of Christmas for an atheist that I found fascinating. It is from ProfMTH, who made videos which I always loved, because he explains things simply but never dunbimg them down, but also because of his Catholic background, which puts his atheism and his deconversion akin to mine (except mine was not half as dramatic as his). Oh, and it has an interpretation of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, which gave me goosebumps. I put a lot of carols on the blog these days...

Monday, 27 December 2010

There is not much time left for Christmas carols, I think the closer it gets to New Year the less enjoyable they get. Like many holidays, I often find Christmas more interesting in the build up (as long as it doesn't start in September). But there are many carols that I can appreciate between Christmas and New Year. Last year, I discovered Gloucestershire Wassailon Youtube by total chance. I particularly like the version of Loreena McKennitt on A Midwinter Night's Dream. I think I like it because it is a drinking song. Because of this and because it mentions the new year, I think it ties it nicely between Christmas and, well, New Year.

Sunday, 26 December 2010

Today is Boxing Day, a day I always hated. But since it is Sunday it will be probably be worse tomorrow, like a nightmare that you live again two nights in a row. Did I mention that I hate Boxing Day? I usually spend the day locked in, reading, watching movies, whatever I can find to avoid going out and meeting civilisation. Although seeing as how people behave like a herd on Boxing Day, "civilisation" might be a generous word.

The 26th of December is supposed to be St Stephen's Day, a saint I know nothing about but his martyrdom and the mention of this day in Good King Wenceslas. Always loved that song, which is also a nice little story. But I love it for its winter atmosphere. Its mentions of cruel frost and rude wind means something to someone who grew up in such winters. When I was a child, I could barely understand English, but the music was enough to make me enjoy Good King Wenceslas. It is also one of those Christmas carols that I associate with Dungeons & Dragons, both because of the setting of its subject and in its music, which dates back to the XIIIth century. Characters walking in the snow on a cold winter night (or day) is a campaign cliché I always loved (and so did my brother who is also our DM). So since I won't play the game any time soon and since I did not put many Christmas carols here, I thought I would put this one. It is, after all, the Feast of Stephen and the frost outside is cruel:

Saturday, 25 December 2010

So Queen Elizabeth II made her Christmas speech today. On the news, I thought she looked like Mrs Santa Claus (I mean she really looked like Mrs Santa Claus!). I am republican and I cannot believe how easy the royals make it to poke fun at them. But I digress... So every important public figure make Christmas speeches, so I thought why not also a commoner like me? I thought about writing here a speech or three reasons: first because it is time for Christmas speeches, as I said, second because my brother sent me a video of the wedding speech I gave at my other brother's wedding, and thirdly because I received as a present The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, which I have been wanting to have and read for ages. It made me wonder if I could write one on the topic. I am an atheist, ideologically I am a secular humanist, but I love Christmas. So why does it matter to me?

Well, it matters because Christmas is a celebration which roots predate Christianity and which significance goes way beyond it. Its imagery is often more Pagan than Christian, it's a celebration of life (yes it is corny to say it, but still true) and I love its excesses. While religious zealots historically found these excesses deplorable and were even against celebrating Christmas, I embrace the Pagan roots, the excesses, the non-spiritual aspect of the holiday. Even as a devout little Catholic boy, I could have never imagined myself spending Christmas in prayers and penance. It does not mean that I disregard charity work done during Christmastime (or done at any time), but any charity work is done to give material, physical comfort of some sort. The pleasure I take from the holiday is desperately physical (for better or for worse, when I have eaten too much like now): I love its atmosphere (and what it represents to me), its religious music I appreciate on a strictly aesthetic level (not believing of the historical truth of its story anymore, but also because its carols have a beauty of their own regardless of their religious significance), etc. In a way, the religious aspect of Christmas is merely cosmetic. And of course there is the question of the nostalgia. Like Halloween, I have strong recollection of my the Christmases of my childhood. At some point, the celebration is in itself a justification of its existence, the memory you have of the past Christmases and the creation of new memories to share in the future are important. I think it is Oscar Wilde who said that all a man is his past. As an utter nostalgic I completely agree. And this is why Christmas as a celebration matters.

Friday, 24 December 2010

...in England for me, that is. In an hour, more or less. I spent my first Christmas away from home last year, but never in England. Strange, as I have been living in this country for more than ten years, on and off. We will celebrate it tomorrow, as proper Englishmen, but I will of course solely miss the tradition of my own country: the celebrations starting at midnight with Minuit Chrétiens (O Holy Night, which is ironic to appreciate as an atheist, but I always suspected it was a republican song disguised as a Christian one), the heavy food eaten very early in the morning, the unwrapping of the presents, the Nativity Scene (another one which one may find strange that I miss, but our Nativity Scene in Chicoutimi is beautiful and artistic and besides I always thought that it was filled with Pagan symbolism), waking up children at midnight... Okay, there are no children to wake up yet/anymore, but still. I guess I am still deeply a cultural Catholic and I live Christmas as such, with the same traditions and icons I identify myself to. Old habits die hard, especially these ones. I want to stay up until Midnight, like I used to not so long ago, to be conscious when Christmas starts.

Anyway, I have decided to put here the picture of the Christmas tree we made back in 2008. It is blurry, but in a way it illustrates my state of mind.

This is something that cheered me up yesterday: I managed to get my hands on some novels of Anthony Burgess, the ones that have been reedited recently and which I was desperate to find. To be more precise, I bought One Hand Clapping (which I never read but always wanted to) and1985 (which I read in French but wanted to re-read). So I missed their launch in Manchester, but I have at least some of them and am now hopeful to find the others.

I am trying to make the best of the situation. The worst is over, I am comfortable at home and ironically now that I am stuck here the snow is going. But hopefully there will still be some left at Christmas. After messing up my trip home, that is the least I could expect. But I am getting in the spirit. Which now means:

-Reading. I have at last time to read. I will try to finish that book on Viking mythology, as I associate Norse mythology with Christmas. There is also this book which is about Christmases in Québec.
-Listening to Christmas carols. I got pretty much all my family's discography on an USB port. Hopefully it will help me cope with the homesickness.
-Cooking. I will try to make a yule log and will make some cranberry sauce. Maybe make some mulled wine too.
-Eat clementines.I associate them a lot with Christmas.
-Increase my alcohol intake. Well, this has already started. I notice that I usually drink a lot more during Christmastime, when I am at home with my family. I don't get drunk or anything (well, not anymore), but I do drink more. Once a year, I think I can do this.

This is whatI have people told me, and what I have been telling myself since I got stranded here. I may not see my family, my godson, I will not eat all the good food I usually stuff myself with, I will not play Dungeons & Dragons this year (I sorely miss our games), I will not play with the electric train (another thing I will miss), I will not smell the Christmas tree, but at least there is snow here. Still, I should have been careful what I wished for. It was not the holidays I was planning to have. But after this post, I will blog only cheerful posts, promise. I will find something. Eventually.

Sunday, 19 December 2010

The title of this post was inspired by a classic piece of WWII British propaganda. I am using it today as a mantra and also as an ironic reminder. As my readers probably know from my previous post in French, I was supposed to be home for Christmas, but I will probably be stuck here, because of the snow that fell. I made fun at the way the English are unable to deal with winter, but that is utterly unfunny. I mean, I am used to winters where things get slow because of the snow, but stopping to a gridlock like that? Being one of those victims of the weather? I mean I know winter! I grew up in it! We were on our way to Heathrow and we saw the country getting paralysed by the minute. I just could not believe it. So yes, for the next few days, I will try to keep calm and carry on. But I cannot help but find bitterly ironic that the country that carried on when the Luftwaffe was bombing the country could surrender so easily to a snow fall.

Friday, 17 December 2010

With the excitement of the last few days, I forgot to mention something: I have been made permanent at my job. Strangely enough, I had forgotten about it: this morning for me it was business as usual. Yet the news is an important one and it matters a lot to me. I need a bit of security in my life, financial security that you get with a steady job, but also some security knowing that you will not be jobless the next morning. I need permanence on the job front. In the last few years, I had been unlucky with jobs. First I lost one in a very bad moment, then I had a few string of rubbish/temporary jobs, then a frustrating and fruitless time trying to make my way into teaching, being overworked and underpaid (and for a while surrounded by scheming, backstabbing bastards). Being made permanent, it is also a revenge against that time. It has not settled in, but I am grateful for it and I will remember that moment when I get tired or frustrated.

Thursday, 16 December 2010

It was my last acting lesson last night. We performed Chekov's Marriage Proposal, half reading the lines half playing, it was pretty much a mess but I enjoyed it tremendously. I was worried that I blogged too much about my acting class and in a way I probably did, however I feel like I barely touched the topic. I did not really talk about the physicality of acting, or the strong group spirit that one feels there, or the fun of getting the lines (some of them anyway), or the things I learned. I will do it again next year. The aspiring acting world is my community, maybe the one I feel most close to. We have all decided to get back in touch as early as possible during the new year.

There is a lot to say about it, but as it happens sometimes I feel like I would either be saying too much or too little. So I will just put here a quote from Cicely Berry, which our acting teacher gave us:

"I think one of the greatest fears of the actor is that of not being interesting. This really need never be a fear because everyone is interesting in that he is himself. When you get to the point which says "This is me, it will change, and perhaps improve, but this is me at this moment", then the voice will become open."

Monday, 13 December 2010

I have decided that I will attend more acting classes next year. I was busy yesterday rehearsing at my teacher's home and will be busy tomorrow night rehearsing again in a nearby town. I need to rehearse, but I discovered yesterday that I needed to do acting, I needed those evenings and that time spent learning lines, finding a voice, finding my character and making him live. I need to do something than watching TV at night and to be more active. I need to socialise of course and above all I need to do something I love. My mother put it perfectly a few weeks ago, she said: "Acting is cheaper than therapy!" This is witty enough to place it among the great unknown lines. It is also true to the core: acting is therapeutic. It is to me anyway and this is why I will carry on. It keeps me sane.

Sunday, 12 December 2010

I was reading Gwen Buchanan's blog recently (which I found because she made a beautiful portrait of Anthony Burgess) and I noticed a pic of a spinning wheel that struck me. It reminded me of one I saw in the Keswick Museum, which you can see pictured on the left. I don't want to make her blush or anything, but I admire Gwen and consider her a true artist because she can take simple objects and show their aesthetic aspect, turn them into artistic creations: a stone wall, working tools, etc. Back in keswick, I took a picture of this spinning wheel because I thought it looked good, without understanding exactly why I thought so. It is a simple object, it was a long time ago a useful one, but it also has strong symbolic associations with the passage of time and death (I think among other things about the Norns in Viking mythology, even though they did not have a spinning wheel). But I just love it as an aesthetic object.

Saturday, 11 December 2010

As I blogged earlier on in French, I did some Christmas shopping today. I found the experience very frustrating. So much on sale, and so little worthy of buying. And I cannot stand the crowd. I hate big crowds. I blogged not so long ago about Buy Nothing Day and I feel that the post was written by another man. Today I wished I could have avoided buying anything and going to shops. I will be a capitalist again on Monday, for practical reasons, but this weekend my temper makes me a radical socialist. I guess I would have felt different going to small local shops, but big shopping centers really get me sick.

Friday, 10 December 2010

"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry."

It may not be his best novel, but A Clockwork Orange certainly has quite a start. It had a strong impression on me when I first read it more than fifteen years ago, at around the same time of the year. For me, it epitomizes winter and teenage at its nastiest. It establishes the setting and characters with efficiency and a dash of poetry. I was reminded of it because the Foundation used it in one of its recent emails. So since it is winter now, often a flip dark chill winter bastard, I thought to put it here. This blog is about true fiction, after all. And there is never enough Anthony Burgess to quote.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

I was supposed to go and rehearse like last week, but finally the actress couldn't make it, so I stayed in tonight. I am glad. Whatever I said about getting out of the house a week ago, I felt that I needed to stay at home. I feel tired and I need a rest. Even learning my lines by myself last night got me exhausted (I did make progress though). Sometimes it feels good to be an hermit. It is strange how my mood changed over a week, tonight I felt almost reclusive. It would be more accurate to say that I wanted to feel home and comfortable. Still, the cave can have its charm.

Monday, 6 December 2010

Maybe it was because it was Monday, maybe it was because it was a grey December day that leads to melancholia, or because Christmas is coming, or for another reason, but I daydreamed quite a lot at work today. This is something I have done since childhood, when I was at school and bored stiff: I used to invent myself stories, sometimes very complex ones. Some of them we ended up playing them my brothers and I (in teenage and later I got a fair deal of D&Dr material through this), some they were just left in my head.

I guess I never quite grew up and my imagination has always been vivid. I mentioned itbefore: I am very conscious of my "Don Quixote" side(and I never read Don Quixote). It is strange because my daydreaming did not prevent me from being a good student, neither is it now a hindrance at work. I can have very good, productive days, yet daydream during a fair deal in them. But I sometimes think that I waste what could be good writing material. If I was putting on paper all of what I think about (a character, an image, a certain scene with atmosphere, a good line, what have you) when I should be doing something else, then getting rid of the bad stuff, then working on the good stuff, then trying to organise this into a whole that stands together, maybe I could write a good play, a good crime novel, maybe even the great Québec expat's novel. Well, one can dream. I would need first discipline, I think.

I blogged about Mozart fairly often, especially about the special relationship I have with his operas. It is through his lyric works that I mainly know and love Mozart. Back in 1991 (I think it was in May), when I was a teenager, my family and I visited Austria, which was therefore during his 200th death anniversary. We visited Mozart's world more than Austria this year, and spent many evenings going to concert, operas, etc. I was hooked for the next Summer. A few years later I got sick of it and listened to other things, mainly XIXth century composers. I got hooked again a few years later. Now his operas are my favourite to sing. I put a lot of his music here and I wanted to put some more to commemorate his death. I thought of his Hallelujah from Exultate Jubilate, but I could not find a good enough version on Youtube to embed here. Most of them simply had an awful sound. But I found this interpretation which is very nice, although I cannot put it here you can follow the link and enjoy it there.

Saturday, 4 December 2010

I finally watched this interview with Christopher Hitchens. I was waiting for inspiration for another post and he gave it to me. There was a mention in this interview that he once said that he was born in the wrong country. He was of course refering to the United States of America, Hitchens having always been drawn to it.

I do not think for a minute that I was born in the wrong country. I am completely, utterly, desperately Quebecker, even as an expat, maybe moreso as an expat. But I do wonder sometimes where I could have been born, given my temperament and sensibilities. I once blogged about where I could live and once about absorbing cultures. This post is much more speculative and pretty much cultural daydream. Still, it is interesting to muse about this.

Of course, being an immigrant in England and having lived in this country on and off for more than ten years. I would have grown up as a pretty good Englishman: proud of a literature that I love (big and small), of the acting world that I admire and envy, drinking real ales, being a tea drinker from a much younger age, grumpy about the lousy weather, etc. I may not have been bilingual had I been born here, but I would still have become a republican, something that I would have gained at late teenage, alongside my atheism. I can more comfortably imagine myself being born English than say Irish or Italian because of my atheism: England is a more fertile soil for it and a more welcoming place. That said, I feel very strong connections to Italy. I have difficulties imagining myself as a born Italian, but in my life I came very close to be an adopted one. At some point, the only thing lacking was the language. I even had been Christened with an Italian name by my Italian friends (one day I might blog about this). During my first year in England, I discovered more Italian culture than British one and felt so comfortable in it that one of the Italian students I was hanging around with once called me "the most Italian of all Canadians". It was quite a compliment. But born in Italy, I wonder if I would have become who I am. I am a Northerner to the core, except when I try to be Italian. And it is difficult to imagine myself growing up in sunny mediterranean south of Italy. But maybe my inclination towards this country was done through absorbtion, it was not inherent to my nature.

Thursday, 2 December 2010

We went to the local Christmas market tonight. It was a short trip and we were both tired and have work tomorrow (and because there is just so much to do there), but as usual we enjoyed it. Some snow fell last night and today, so it looked a bit like winter and Christmastime. There was the typical things: the Salvation army playing Christmas carols, food stands selling delicious meaty stuff (hot dogs and hamburgers mainly), lots of teenagers (many of whom I thought gave me side glances and I do find it tiresome), lots and lots of charities. It was the occasion for me to drink some seasonal ales from the local brewery, which I did, encourage some students businesses (long parenthesis here: I bought a tea mug from young girls entrepreneurs who were not from the school I taught and it was all right as I like to encourage commerce now) and give a few pennies to charities. I refrained from eating a burger, even though all that meat smelled delicious. But we had dinner before and I don`t want to stuff myself on a weekday. A short but nice evening that put me in the mood of the season.